Caldron Linn

The man the sign leaves unnamed was Antoine Clappine, one of Wilson Price Hunt's most experienced voyageurs, drowned on October 28, 1811, when his canoe struck a half-sunken rock above the falls. The explorer of the following year was Robert Stuart, back to reclaim goods cached here, who found only three of the abandoned canoes. His sentence runs on past the sign's quotation to compare the water to Hecate's caldron. The sign's last line no longer holds: a narrow road reaches the falls, on the National Register since 1972.

What the plaque says

Caldron Linn In 1811 the Hunt party likened the terrific torrent of the Snake three miles east of here to a boiling caldron, adding the old Scottish word "linn," meaning a waterfall. They had lost a man and a canoe in a roaring chute upstream. Finding worse water ahead they abandoned river travel. Next year, another explorer said of Caldron Linn, "Its terrific appearance beggars all description." Today no road reaches the spot and the name is forgotten. 284 Text prepared by the Idaho Historical Society Marker made & installed by Idaho Transportation Department

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Shoshone Falls — 12 mi
  Higher than Niagara, and turned up and down on a schedule. What reaches the rim is whatever the canals leave.
• Minidoka National Historic Site — 12 mi
  The prisoners built a board for the names of their sons in the Army. When the camp was given away as farms, the board was lost.
• Perrine Bridge — 14 mi
  Four hundred and eighty-six feet of air between deck and river, and the one span in the country you may jump from without asking.

More markers nearby

• Hansen Bridge — 6.6 mi
• Hunt — 12 mi
• Prehistoric Hunters — 12 mi
• Milner Dam — 14 mi